Between the official showcases, the pre-shows, the day shows, the afterparties, and the crazy spur-of-the-moment surprise sets (hey, it’s happened before!), keeping track of the bands you wanna check out can be impossible. Never mind researching the thousands of bands you haven’t heard of for those hidden gems; just the thought of sxsw’s official lineup is intimidating. So we’re going to try and make it a bit easier for you, by posting a few sxsw artist reviews per week. Just some of our own personal artists-you-gotta-see picks.
Mirah’s voice is so sweet that if her music wasn’t so dramatic or restrained or orchestrated or… well, let’s just say that Mirah avoids a cloying pop niche so deftly that you can’t even imagine associating it with her. She is charming in the way Regina Spektor is, but without as many obvious quirks. Her new album drops right before sxsw, and we cannot wait to hear it.
Passionpit has a truly intimidating amount of hype built up around them. Music blog darlings after their infectious tune Sleepyhead spread like a virus across the internet, their buzz even trickled into mainstream music magazine websites like Spin. And from the tracks on their MySpace, along with video snippets of their recording process, the forthcoming album may just live up to expectations. With a New York kids choir providing backup for part of the album, mention of “tons of handbells” throughout, and a singer whose falsetto suits their dance and synth-influenced tracks like – well, a bit like local electro-rockers Ghostland Observatory, actually.
